Sunday, August 15, 2010

suffering

I'm half-heartedly looking for a new job. I really like all my coworkers, but there are sooo many things that make me grumpy.

Mostly it's the store manager. He has told me repeatedly that he never would have hired me "looking like that." Lucky for me, it wasn't up to him because he wasn't there. But still, even though I receive nothing but praise from everyone else in the store for being the hardest and best worker they have ever seen, he still judges me on my hair and tattoos.
I am the only person capable of doing my job - the store manager really has no idea what it entails. Yet, he continually criticizes me and then tries to give me "advice" on how to improve. "Why aren't you straightening the area while you're over here?" Because I don't have nearly enough time to worry about what the product on the shelves looks like. I don't even have enough time to get all the displays set up because about once a week I'm taken from my actual job to do something else, like cashier. You know, the important stuff that utilizes every bit of my potential.

Today he was complaining that a sign I was hanging on the wall (via adhesive) was crooked. It didn't look crooked to me, but I explained that I couldn't reach it to make it perfect, as it was over the sunglasses cases, which was about 4 feet from the closest point the 8-foot ladder could get. We had this conversation:
"You can step on these, you know."
"Dave, those are cardboard."
"Then step on this."
"That's a light. That would end badly." (specifically, it was the casing for a flourescent light that hangs over the sunglass displays to showcase them better.)
"Well you don't have to put any weight on it. Just put your front foot on it so you can reach the wall."
"No. Putting my foot on something in front of me and then being sure to not put any weight on that foot while I'm reaching in front of me will not help me do anything except fall onto the displays from 8 feet high and go to the hospital."
"But the sign is crooked."
Then another coworker who was in the area said "Why don't you do it for her? You could probably reach better than her, so it would look like you want it to."
I said "yeah, there are only 15 of them today, and the store opens in under 2 hours. Knock yourself out. Literally."
After that he left me alone for the time being, but this is the kind of conversation that I have with him every time I see him. You can imagine how irritating this would be when I've been at work since 4am, and he comes waltzing in and pokes around in everyone's business, trying to look useful since he doesn't actually know anything about what we are doing.

I don't get paid enough to put up with that, or for the new shade of "bruise" my legs have become. I've started using Arnica lotion to help heal them, but that stuff stinks to high heaven. Plus there's no point if I just get new bruises every day, even when I am super careful.

The downside is that there are no jobs in this town. I take that back - there are a very few. However, they are all either retail jobs equivalent to what I already have, or things I am in no way qualified for, like "doctor" or "machinist." I don't have the resources needed to learn a new trade, and I already know plenty. So I'll suffer through this job for a bit longer, knowing that I will get glowing recommendations from everyone I work with (except the store manager, whose opinion I won't ask) for suffering through.

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